


Cutting the Knot

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Infidelity, M/M, Veritaserum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry, Draco, and one vial of Veritaserum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cutting the Knot

**Author's Note:**

> This is another of my Advent fics, this time for mothlights. She asked for Harry, Draco, and anything with Veritaserum and truth as a primary theme.

  
Potter leaned back from the table, his eyes wide. He said nothing, though, his teeth grinding down in that way Draco knew and hated. They would be biting his tongue, sinking into his gums, holding any possibly betraying sign captive.  
  
His breath rushed through his nostrils despite their narrowness; he struggled in silence against the arms of the chair, as though he wasn't capable of rising and walking away from it and this blank little room if he wanted. But he stayed, because Draco had told him what would happen if he didn't.  
  
Draco held up the vial of Veritaserum in silence. It gleamed, lit from within by a fugitive gleam of light from the fireplace. He turned it back and forth, and let Potter get as good a look at it as he needed or wished.  
  
After long, slow moments, Potter nodded.  
  
Draco smiled and reached out, but the little wooden table, small though it was, was still wide enough to separate them. His hand fell far short of the strained, bulging arm that Potter had fixed on the chair. Draco shrugged and rose, circling the table towards Potter.  
  
Potter looked up at him in that same, fixed silence. His green eyes were wild, and Draco could see the gleam of magic in them, magic that was perfectly capable of causing his death if Potter lashed out.  
  
Draco knelt down in front of Potter and lifted his hands and his throat, baring them in the quiet, baring them to the magic, baring them to all the things Potter could do, if he didn't care that much about the consequences. And he might not. It had taken them this, the vow Potter had made to show up here and the Veritaserum, to come this far. Draco would know the reason if Potter turned away at the final hurdle.  
  
He would blame him, of course. But mainly, he would _know_.  
  
Potter bowed his head. His body shook as though horror and hatred were traveling through him in pulses like waves. Draco waited, and all the time the Veritaserum gleamed and shone like Potter's eyes.  
  
At last, Potter nodded.  
  
Draco stood up and tapped the vial. A few of the droplets fell out, and landed on his finger. He extended it, and felt Potter watching him with double the intensity that Draco watched himself, to make sure that none of the precious potion it had taken him so many hours to brew fell from his finger.  
  
Potter's mouth stretched open, further, further. His tongue was there, lapping the air, begging as he had never been able to bring himself to beg.  
  
Draco laid his finger on Potter's tongue, smearing the Veritaserum there, and stepped back.  
  
Potter pulled his tongue into his mouth and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, they shone like the potion.  
  
"Your name?" Draco asked, his voice falling into the silence.  
  
"Harry James Potter." Potter stared at him without the same limp slackness in his face that Draco would have expected from any other victim of Veritaserum. Of course he did, Draco thought, rolling his eyes. Potter had to be special like that.  
  
Then he remembered what else being special had brought Potter, and shook his head. That was part of the reason they had come here, and it was the reason Potter had given him the power to brew the potion and ask the questions at all.   
  
"Your relationship to me?" he asked.  
  
Potter's throat bobbed several times. Draco waited. He knew he had brewed the potion correctly. That wasn't the problem. The problem was what had brought them here, an interrogation room in the depths of the Ministry that both of them had passed by but spent no time in before, because it was the only place where Draco could think of this kind of thing taking place.  
  
Always the same bloody problem.  
  
Potter opened his mouth, and the answer came away like someone tearing a chunk of bloody flesh from the back of his throat. "You're my lover."  
  
Draco half-closed his eyes. He could feel the sound of the word pounding at his stomach like a fist, and he swallowed several times. Then he said, "Tell me why you needed Veritaserum to admit that."  
  
Here it was. Crux, center, goal, and quest object. The thing Potter had never been able to say, the words he had never been able to bring himself to utter.   
  
Draco waited.  
  
Once again, the silent struggle. Not because the potion didn't work, not because Potter hadn't known the question was coming, but because so many different possibilities underlay the lack of a coherent answer up to this point that the Veritaserum had to sort through them all before Potter could name the real one.  
  
Then Potter whispered, "Because it scares me, knowing that I love a man. Knowing that I love _you_."  
  
Draco opened his eyes and took a step forwards, his fist planted on his own stomach now.  
  
Potter stared at him, and the words spilled and spilled and spilled. "Because how can I tell my friends anything, when you were so horrible to them and I still don't _understand_ why I decided to fuck you? Why you decided to fuck me? Because how can I say anything after all the months I was silent and turned away when you bared your heart to me? Because what _is_ this, this stupid _thing_ where we run into each other and kiss in corners and fight in public and then shag like the world's going to end the moment we get a bit of privacy? I've never been so terrified in my life as I was at that one bloody Ministry celebration where we were in that corner and someone casting a _Lumos_ Charm in the wrong place could have revealed me on my knees for you."  
  
"You've also never come so hard in your life," Draco muttered, not because he really wanted to interrupt the confession Potter had finally agreed to give him, but because he couldn't compel himself to keep silent.  
  
Potter nodded to him and said, "I don't know this person I am, now. The person I knew wanted a family and marriage and to be an Auror. And _nothing else._ I kind of suspected I would change the first time I had sex, but--not like this.  
  
"The person I used to be would never have had sex with a man, or cheated on his girlfriend with one, or, hell, kissed one. Held hands with one. Slept beside one." Potter's eyes were wide and savage in the firelight. "I _changed,_ and I don't know how this happened, and sometimes I think I want the old Harry back, the one who was _normal_ and didn't have fantasies about forcing you to your knees and my cock down your throat. I want to be him more than I want to be myself."  
  
Draco took his fist away from his stomach. This time, there could be nothing to cushion the blow. "You want that more than you want me?" he whispered.  
  
Potter's eyes caught his.  
  
Time caught.  
  
Then Potter sobbed, and whispered, the relief like a poison in his voice, "No. I want you most. I love you most. I don't--don't wish I was the old Harry all the time. I know I can't go back to him, I don't really want to, he's just a safe fantasy and a dream that I can flee to--"  
  
And then Draco was on him, kissing him, holding him, forcing him still, while Harry sobbed and sobbed and clung to him, and Draco was tasting his tongue and tasting his truth and tasting his words, and whispering, "Hush, hush, it's all right. You've said enough."  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
